All posts tagged David Davis

To lunch with a veteran Thatcher-era cabinet minister. Cameron has a “cool” and steady temperament, he claims, and the Tory leader is right not to be overly spooked by the narrowing in the polls. “The lead is substantial. He’ll win.”

But something that he said, and I’ve heard this now from Labour people and Tories alike in recent months, is that the Cameron Conservatives really lack a big beast of an attack dog. Cameron as leader, my lunch companion observes, cannot do it because it is not really his job.

Of the 1980s the former minister says: “We had Norman (Tebbit) and others. You need them in an election more than at any time. Mandelson is very good on the attack and he’ll be at it every single day of a campaign. And who responds from the Tories?”